How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth? - Highlights - TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE

"So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.